Just in case it wasn’t enough for Nintendo to shadow drop Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo on us, they also saw fit to ensure Alarmo was the latest project to be covered during their “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across four chapters, Producer Yosuke Tamori and Director, Tetsuya Akama were asked many questions, and now it is time to hear their answers.
When talking about Alarmo, Tamori reveals how Alarmo is not your typical project as it is not common for a hardware developer to take on the role of director when a product involves software development:
Nintendo Sound Clock | Tamori on How Alarmo Differs from the Typical Development Project:
Yosuke Tamori: It’s not common for a hardware developer to take a director role for a product that involves software development, as Akama-san did this time. But for example, during the development of Ring Fit Adventure, some requests were made from the software side to the hardware side along the lines of, “We’d like to create this kind of gameplay, but can you provide us with suitable hardware?”. Even though some of those ideas may not be released to the public, the software and hardware teams continue to work together to develop products.
On top of that, in this case, in addition to hardware and software developers, we also had developers from a field that connects the two, called system software. So the three different departments joined forces from the initial stages of development.
The term “development” covers a variety of fields: hardware development, which designs the physical product and its mechanics; system software development, which controls the motion sensor and inner devices; and application software development, which is required for the alarm and display. The cultures differ depending on the department or position, so we often struggled at a team-building level, figuring out how to move forward together.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 14, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo – Chapter 2:
Ask the Developer | Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo (Participating Developers)
- Yosuke Tamori | Entertainment Planning & Development Division, Production Group No.4 (Producer)
- Tetsuya Akama | Technology Development Department, Technology Development Group No.1 (Director)
